Show not for everybody
Stories require attention span
IF you walk out of the Dunedin Fringe Festival comedy Attention Seeker tonight you won’t be the first to do so.
Two women walked out on Canadian comedian Gerard Harris during his preview performance at the festival’s opening show at Dunedin Town Hall on Wednesday.
Everyone usually stayed for the duration of his show but at the latest Edmonton International Fringe Festival in Canada — the oldest and largest fringe festival in North America — he had six ‘‘walkouts’’ from 10 of his soldout shows.
‘‘I’d never had walkouts in my life.’’
Everyone who walked out were in a couple and aged in their 20s.
Harris said the couple walked out because they lacked the attention span needed to watch his show.
‘‘I wanted to yell: ‘Wait, this show is about you’, but they can’t stick around to find out because they want instant gratification, they want bam, bam, bam, joke, joke, joke and they think ‘Story, what? I can’t wait for this story to finish’ ’’.
Some people found the show format of ‘‘me talking about me for an hour’’ to be disconcerting, he said.
Some people were simply offended by his material, Harris said.
After a recent soldout performance in Wellington, a ‘‘little old lady’’ from the audience gave him a programme for his show on leaving.
Inside the returned programme was a handwritten note, which read:
Dear Mr Harris, here are three points I want to make about your show.
1. Please do not make fun of Catholics, we have religious tolerance in this country.
2. Please don’t make jokes about ectopic pregnancies.
3. Above all else, please do not talk about eating pooh.
‘‘And she spelt pooh with an h at the end,’’ he laughed.
The performer from Montreal said he returned to the Dunedin fringe because it was the first place he had a soldout show and where he won his first award (2016 best comedy).
‘‘I made more friends in Dunedin in a week than I’ve made in some countries in a year.’’
The ‘‘community feeling’’ created by the festival crew put it among the best fringe festivals in the world, he said.
shawn.mcavinue@odt.co.nz